UC Riverside gives local economy a lift

UC Riverside
provides an
economic boost of $628 million and just over 11,000 jobs annually
in Riverside County, according to
a recent report
commissioned by
the university.

The report, performed by
CBRE
Consulting
, examined the university's economic impact
nationally, in Inland Southern California, and in Riverside County
for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2010. It examined factors
such as the payroll for UCR employees and indirect economic
activity attributable to UCR. The report did not provide numbers
for Southwest County.

The report calculated the university's nationwide economic
impact at $1.4 billion and 16,335 jobs annually. For inland
Southern California, it estimated an economic impact of $758
million and 12,000 jobs annually.

As the only University of California campus for inland Southern
California, UC Riverside represents a potential source of new ideas
and technologies that can be used to create jobs in the region, say
officials in Murrieta and Temecula. The UC system emphasizes
research, which makes it a promising source of technologies that
can be spun off into companies.

"We have learned more about what UCR is doing from a recent
event that the city of Murrieta hosted at the San Diego Zoo," said
Bruce Coleman, Murrieta's economic development director. The topic
was
biomimicry
,
a field that adapts technologies used by living creatures to make
products. It's a field the university has developed as a strength,
Coleman said, and which could be applied to form an economic
cluster in Murrieta.

"Biomimicry certainly appears to be what people are calling a
game-changer for a regional economy," Coleman said. That same logic
can apply to any other field where UC Riverside faculty are
developing technologies with economic uses.

UC Riverside has long been known for its agricultural expertise,
which proved useful for Temecula's Wine Country in the late 1990s
when it was hit with a damaging pest called the glassy-winged
sharpshooter. The leaf-hopping pest transmits a bacterium that
kills grapevines, and damages other crops. University advisers
helped track infections and told growers how handle infections.
They also researched technologies such as genetic engineering and
control of the
sharpshooter
with a parasite.

Meanwhile, a team of the university's researchers has been
studying mosquito biology with the goal of developing a repellent.
What the team led by
Anandasankar Ray
found wasn't a repellent, but something almost
as good, a chemical that
blocks the ability of mosquitoes
to locate their prey.

And UCR's new s
chool
of medicine
promises to extend its reach into the medical
sector. The school is scheduled to accept its first class in 2013,
and has already produced more than $28 million in annual economic
benefit to the region, according to the CBRE consulting report.

By 2021, the school could create more than $150 million in
annual spending, the report stated. Even more economic activity
would come from research grants to the school;'s faculty.